Comedian Taran Killam said the request from Lorne Michaels made sense once he realized Donald Trump would soon be hosting "SNL." (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

“Saturday Night Live” is well accustomed to aggressively mocking President Trump, but it seems the long-running sketch show wasn’t always so down to tease the Republican.

Taran Killam revealed in a new interview that back in 2015, the show’s creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels urged the cast and crew to go easy on Trump, and try and make him “likable.”

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“Lorne was being so specific about what we could and couldn’t say about him,” Killam told the “I Was There Too” podcast this week.

The comedian, who left the show in 2016 after briefly serving as the resident Trump impersonator, said that the writers were looking to mock a CNN interview Trump had done, but that Michaels quickly put the kibosh on it.

“Lorne was like, ‘It’ll be too old news by then, and you know, you don’t want to vilify him. He’s like any New York taxi driver. I know him, I’ve seen him around at parties for years and years, and he just says whatever it is he’s thinking, and that’s his thing,’ ” Killam recalled, diving into a Michaels impression. “’But, you know, you have to find a way in that makes him likable, and why don’t we do something where it’s him and his apartment, and it’s him and Melania and he’s just a guy?’ ”

Killam said the "SNL" cast and crew were urged to go easy on Trump. (SAUL LOEB / AFP/Getty Images)

Killam, 36, recalls being flabbergasted by the request to make the polarizing politician “likable,” but says all the pieces fell into place a week later, when it was revealed Trump would be hosting the show.

“It was like, ‘OK, that’s why, I see,’ ” he said. “One of the things I do respect the most about Lorne is he is a very good host to his guests, he’s very protective and he’s very equal-opportunity and kind for the most part. If people are coming to stick their necks out and host the show, he wants them to feel as good about it as possible.”

Trump served as host on Nov. 7, 2015, and, as Killam has spoken about in previous interviews, flubbed the table reads by trying to insert his own lines into what the writers had planned.

“The President is a moron,” Killam told Brooklyn magazine last year. “Most of the cast and writers were not excited to have him there …. He struggled to read at the table read, which did not give many of us great confidence. Didn’t get the jokes, really. He’s just a man who seems to be powered by bluster.”

Alec Baldwin has since successfully stepped in as the go-to guy for Trump impersonations, even scooping up an Emmy last year for the role.

“SNL” has relentlessly mocked the President since his turn as host, and has been the recipient of multiple angry tweets from Trump, who has called it “unfunny” and a “hit job,” among other things.